In five YouTube minutes, you could change the world. Much like the beginning days of television, the rise of the internet is transforming the way that our art form interacts with the world. The newness of the medium leaves an incredible openness for new content creators to make their mark on the culture, and change the face of storytelling. Furthermore, the rise of social networks and social media content has played a huge role in the culture shift towards a more tolerant humanity. It has done wonders for gay rights, for human rights activism, for revolution, and even veganism. We are currently witnessing a similar consciousness shift for women’s rights. Through social networks and internet media, women everywhere are challenging the way we are portrayed in conventional media and how we are treated every day in every environment. Social /Viral media allows us to share our voices with our communities and act as influencers towards a more tolerant culture. (We could also spew hate and bigotry, but really, why do that?)
The path toward becoming a content or even series creator is more open than it’s ever been before. I have a close friend who had a viral video five years ago, and now has a movie deal at Fox, with shows in development at two networks. There are new outlets for content in the form of web-networks that display more diverse stories to more targeted audiences. These newly emerging networks are lusting for quality content, so the opportunity exists to tell new stories, stories that are more representative of the diversity of American and human experiences.
So what are we, the creators, going to do with this new found freedom? My dream is that we can use the new “mass-media” landscape (where the masses are becoming the media) to expand boundaries for women and to begin to break down the beauty barrier. If you read my up-close-and-personal look at body image last month, you heard all about how damaging the cookie-cutter, idealized standards of beauty are for women: not only for actresses, but for almost all women, everywhere. But the problem is deeper than a limited beauty standard. On a hike with a dear friend recently the topic of “marketable looks” for women in Hollywood came up: a topic that always leads to much chagrin and cynicism from both of us. In reality we don’t just want to expand “beauty standards” to include average-sized and voluptuous women. We want to abolish them. We want to tell stories that are real: stories where casting doesn’t speculate about the fat-arm-angle, or the perfect symmetry of our face because the script ALWAYS mentions how hot this particular nurse/police officer/receptionist/judge/CIA spy is. We want to tell stories where women are whole-humans, where we don’t exist simply to be judged against what is beautiful.
We want to break beauty.
Unfortunately, whatever attractiveness level you are, as any actress in Hollywood, you are always evaluated in terms of beauty: your possession or lack-of it. It is confining for the beautiful, as well as the non-beautiful. And boy, is there applause for the beautiful women who are brave enough to portray ugly. This standard doesn’t apply as much to male actors. If you ARE a hot guy, well there are plenty of roles for the HOT guy. But then again you can be a good looking actor, who portrays a wide variety of characters- many of which are not labelled by the world as “Hot”. But if you are not the hot guy: if you are the average guy, the chubby guy, the bearded guy, the bald guy, the wrinkly guy, the no-chin guy, the tattooed guy, the glasses guy: well, there is probably still a role for you, hell, you may even break through to headline a film opposite a super-model. (The non-white guy has more limited “look” spectrums, but this too, is changing rapidly as the roles for men on television are becoming more race-diverse).
Yet women have a much harder time existing outside of the beauty-consciousness. There are a few roles, and a few shows, where women exist for a reason outside of their beauty (The Killing, Chloe on 24, Allison Janney on The West Wing, Some of the female characters on Grey’s Anatomy, Orange is the New Black). But most women featured in television and film are commented on as “cute, beautiful, hot, or gorgeous” by the creators, if not in the dialogue than certainly in the script description. They must be beautiful to exist.
In reality, women come in all shapes, sizes, and a-symmetries. We bring many diverse identities into the world with as many complex talents, thoughts and character flaws, as men do. We are amazingly multi-faceted, and that incredible wholeness needs to be portrayed in the media that we put into the world. In five minutes we can influence hearts and minds everywhere. In five minutes we can reclaim our identities outside the beauty barrier. In five minutes we can create characters that exist for a purpose beyond how beautiful they are. In five minutes, we CAN break beauty. Now let’s do it.